Firefighters are making cities harder places to live in, this might seem like an odd thing to read. It’s counterintuitive since we’re used to thinking blindly that the firefighters (and EMS as a whole) have our best interests at mind. In North America, fire fighters are blocking initiatives to make
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Things Are Good: Swag Bags are a Drag
Professional conferences which suffer from being described as boring try to appeal to people using consumerism in the form of a “swag bag”. A swag bag handed out to conference attendees usually contains useless gizmos like stress balls to appeal to a basic human tendency: acquiring stuff. Going to one
Continue readingThings Are Good: Oysters Are Saving New York’s Waters
There are many fans of oysters who eat them for their failure; however, I’m a fan of oysters because of what they eat. Back in 2011 we looked at the idea of using oysters to clean waters while harbouring other species – with the bonus impact that the oysters then
Continue readingThings Are Good: India is Crafting 21st Century Jugaad
The Hindi term jugaad roughly translates to “a type of frugal innovation or creative hack” and can be found throughout India. It’s not so much one thing as it is a conceptual approach to problem solving which stems from years of poverty and maltreatment of the lower classes (and castes)
Continue readingThings Are Good: How Road Diets Improve Traffic Flow
Urban planners know adding streets won’t make traffic any better, indeed adding capacity for more cars does the opposite: it makes traffic worse. The problem is that the average person (and politicians) don’t know this little quirk of urban planning. As a result we still build sub-urban areas to cater
Continue readingThings Are Good: The Last Great Generational War
Baby boomers ensured that the economy, the planet, and their children are now all in a worse condition than when the boomers were born. This is common knowledge if you’re not a baby boomer and may come as a shock for those who of you born before 1964. All the
Continue readingThings Are Good: How Oslo Builds for a Sustainable Transit Future
Oslo: The Journey to Car-free from STREETFILMS on Vimeo. Oslo’s transition from car-focussed to people focussed transportation is well underway and is causing ripples around the world. Other cities are noting how the scandinavian city works with locals to get them out of their cars and onto the streets. Last
Continue readingThings Are Good: Big Boxes Have Failed us; Supporting Downtowns will Save us
We’ve all heard about how downtowns have failed in smaller cities while big box stores like Walmart succeed; what we don’t really talk about is why and what’s the solution. First we need to establish that suburban big box stores are horrible for people and the economy (which is easy);
Continue readingThings Are Good: Here’s an Optimistic Savings Chart
Retirement is a dream too far away for people to think about. We’re all really bad at thinking about the future and we often don’t want to think about money. Four Pillar Freedom put together the early retirement grid to address these concerns, and indeed retirement is something you can
Continue readingThings Are Good: The Happiest Workers are Self-Employed
It’s Wednesday my dudes, which means you’re likely midway through your work week. If you’re looking for a boost in productivity and happiness you may want to consider working for yourself. People who are self-employed report being happier than people who work for bosses in a recent in study about
Continue readingThings Are Good: How Trent University Preserves Canadian Architecture
Like other art forms styles come and go in architecture; and when styles go in architecture it can result in demolition of buildings (and thus history). In Canada university and college campuses sprung up in the 60s to accommodate the influx of baby boomers so the style of these campuses
Continue readingThings Are Good: For Inspiration Follow the Local Learning Process of a Gardener
Bees are amazing little creatures that have been around far longer than humans but now they need our help. As byproduct of industrialization and the overuse of pesticides colony collapse disorder has hit the bees and hard. There is something we as individuals can do to help the bees -start
Continue readingThings Are Good: David Byrne Launches Good News Site
David Byrne, artist extraordinaire, revealed his newest project to the world and I love it! Reasons to be Cheerful is a reaction to the bizarreness of 2017 and the craziness that 2018 has already witnessed. In an attempt to highlight the positivity in these turbulent times Reasons to be Cheerful
Continue readingThings Are Good: Working Less for a Better World
Do you feel like you’re working too much? You are. Decades ago economists and influential thinkers projected that leisure would be the biggest problem during the 21st century for the workforce. Sadly they were wrong because they didn’t predict that the 1980s we’ve seen policies that favour profit abound all
Continue readingThings Are Good: Good Companies Have Good Indigenous Relations
With greater awareness of environmental and social issues investors have asked companies to report on how their activities impact communities. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports are standard for large corporations nowadays which let investors (and interested parties) see what the company has been up to reconcile any negative impacts the
Continue readingThings Are Good: New Fish Food Doesn’t Require Killing Fish
When fish farms kill their fish for food some of that food is ground up and fed to other fish as nutrient pellets. It’s well known that current fishing practices are really bad for the environment and that fish farms aren’t good for their local environment. Anything we can do
Continue readingThings Are Good: Baristas with developmental disabilities making brilliant coffee
At a local Toronto coffee shop, a group of baristas as tight-knit as you’ll ever find, brew up delicious coffee. But more than that, the staff here are given purpose, life-skills, and a chance to make genuine connections with their peers. At the Coffee Shed, all of the baristas have
Continue readingThings Are Good: There’s Profit in Reusing Office Furniture
When opening an office a key thing to take into consideration is where people are going to work. In these modern times just letting employees sit on the floor won’t cut it. Buying furniture can be expensive and add a lot to startup costs, so an enterprising company has taken
Continue readingThings Are Good: Uruguay Defeated Big Tobacco
Large tobacco companies that operation multinationally and earn billions of dollars a year off of an unhealthy addictive drug often fight poor nations. They fight poor nations in the courts and the markets when those poor nations try to increase the well being of their citizens by managing tobacco sales. Recently Uruguay won a legal […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: Underwater Art Gallery
Art galleries are great cultural institutions and seeing one underwater is magnificent. With each installation to the underwater gallery it gets better to explore and better for life. One of the key aspects of this gallery is that it is home to a whole ecosystem. For sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor, the ocean is more than […]
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